The Edge of the Cliff, Santa Monica Mountains National Park

I always love it when major media follows my lead on something I've written. In the original version of The New Common Sense, (See my very first post for an explanation.) I wrote an attack on U2 rocker, The Edge, and his foray into real estate development. On a ridge line over Malibu, with sweeping views of the ocean, The Edge, wants to build five McMansions, albeit, according to The Edge, eco-friendly McMansions.
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The Ouch! As reported in today's edition of the Los Angeles Times, (Remember when the L.A. Times was still a major newspaper?) columnist Steve Lopez points out that if The Edge was really that concerned about the environment, he'd stay in his already acceptable Malibu home and leave the mountain tops alone. Lopez couldn't agree with me more.
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If Lopez had actually read my original post, (And I'm not egotistical enough to think that he has.) he'd join me in my call for a Santa Monica Mountains National Park. Yes, it's time to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains in a new national park. There are many reasons to go for the much stronger level of protection than the current mish-mash of state and local parks; Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy holdings; and The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. To start with, and it's the single most important reason of all, the Santa Monica Mountains are a unique eco-system, found in few other places in the world, and the preservation of such an important habitat is exactly what National Parks are for. It also makes a lot of sense for us to stop allowing people to build in areas that are prone to both wild fires and landslides. Come on people! I don't have anything against the rich, but we can't afford to keep subsidizing their crazy desire to live in dangerous places. How many years must we pay an extra hundred million or so defending high end, stand alone homes, perched high on secluded ridges, as fires rage all around them. And while we're talking class war, what's so wrong with urban adjacent national parks that can be visited by people with bus passes?
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This isn't a crazy vision for the future of the Santa Monica Mountains. Draw a map and decide what should be preserved. Of course, Malibu stays, and so does the somewhat more downscale Fernwood area of Topanga Canyon. But other than that, as properties come on the market, the Interior Department should have first dibs to match the selling price of any property transaction. It may take twenty years, and judicious use of eminent domain laws, as well as take overs of local and state parks, to complete a Santa Monica Mountains National Park, but it's a better path to take than more, senseless, development.
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And while I'm on the subject, Tejon Ranch National Park, an idea whose time has come.
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Want a good laugh? The Edge has named his five McMansions. "Clouds Rest" "Panorama" "Shell House" "Blue Clouds" and "Leaves in the Wind." There's nothing more pretentious than a rich, middle aged man who calls himself The Edge. Come on man, follow John Mellencamp's lead and use your real name.

Huck

Pay attention. I'm about to do something I rarely do. I'm going to defend a Republican.
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Poor Mike Huckabee is taking it on the chin for his grant of clemency, while governor of Arkansas, to Maurice Clemmons, who killed four police officers in Washington state. Don't get me wrong, if this sends Huck's political career to the elephant's graveyard, I'll be quite happy. But, it is my opinion that we send too many people to prison; we send them to prison at too young an age; we keep them behind bars far too long. Huck was right to try and give offenders a second chance.
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While it appears that Huckabee was making clemency decisions based more on references to Jesus, than appeals to reason, it should be noted that the impulse to not throw people away, like so much garbage, is a right one. I just went out to the desert for a few days of hiking and while headed home, I made a couple of stops at convenience stores and fast food joints. I saw so many young people, some working the counters, and some customers, and I noticed how ill educated they seemed. As I noted in my last post, we once had one of the finest education systems in the world, but, then we made the decision to cut taxes and defund education, destroying the foundation of our society.
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It's been so many years since Ronald Reagan chose tax cuts over everything else, that these poor kids don't even realize that tax cuts for the wealthy few, has taken any future that they might have had, from them. We've now gone through several generations of young people that are fit for little more than menial jobs, drug abuse, and crime.
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Huckabee's mistake was not an impulse to grant clemency, but rather membership in a political party that has created the under lying problem. In supporting conservative economic policies that have wiped out several generations of the young, he and his Repug cohorts, have guaranteed that crime will rise, and that granting clemency will be an issue.